"Climate Scientist Dr. Judith Curry: ‘Attention in the public debate seems to be moving away from the 15-17 year ‘pause’ to the cooling since 2002’".....leading climate players are starting to speak out about climate reality (ie, cooling) - as the growing empirical evidence continues to invalidate the CO2-warming theory, the result is a bending of the "consensus"
(click on images to enlarge, source of left image)
As documented in multiple recent posts (here, here, here, here and here), the global temperature datasets reveal that over the past decade+, world temps have plateaued and now may be slipping into a cooling phase. This has taken place in spite of the huge amount of CO2 emissions added to the atmosphere over that same time period.
Facing empirical realities, many climate scientists, and other scientific researchers, are now questioning/challenging the "consensus" CO2-AGW theory that human CO2 emissions will automatically produce rapid, accelerating dangerous global warming. And instead of pushing the politically correct "warming" meme, more research is now discussing global cooling.
But why would respected climate researchers now start raising the spectre of global cooling and all its potential ugliness? Hmmm....maybe it has something to do with the SUN, no?
As the chart on the top left depicts, the current solar cycle (#24) is a very weak cycle that exhibits a significant decline in solar activity. As all scientists know and admit, low solar activity has a strong association with global cooling - think the Little Ice Age type of cooling.
And, the vast majority of scientists now recognize that Earth just experienced the period known as the 'Modern Maximum' of solar activity (review the top two solar charts on this page). The fact that global temperatures increased during this period is leading many to conclude that maybe human CO2 emissions are not as powerful 'influencer' on climate as claimed by the UN's IPCC.
In fact, when scientists start deconstructing recent temperatures, it quickly becomes obvious that atmospheric CO2 levels likely have nothing to do with "accelerating" and "dangerous" global warming.
That brings us to the second chart on the right. This chart may help explain why more and more climate scientists are bending their consensus AGW beliefs.
This chart plots the monthly CO2 levels (black dots) and the solar sunspot count (red/yellow curve) since 1979 and the moving 10-year trends (by month) for the RSS lower atmosphere temperatures (blue columns). The age of satellites brought us the first full year of lower atmosphere measurements beginning in 1979; thus, the first 10-year period would end December 1989, which is where the blue columns commence.
What does this chart of undeniable and irrefutable empirical evidence suggest?
#1. The "accelerating" global warming has actually been decelerating from peaks experienced in 1998 and 2002 - note the downward slope of the solid blue line
#2. The most recent 10-year trends (far right blue columns) have gone negative - global cooling of the atmosphere has been taking place over the last 10+ years
#3. As the chart clearly indicates, global temperature trends have been collapsing since 2002 yet atmospheric CO2 levels continue with robust (even record-setting) growth
#4. Per the maroon trend line, the sunspot count (a proxy for solar activity) has been also declining
#5. The solar cycles are noted at the bottom of the chart and the current solar cycle #24 looks very weak versus its predecessors (confirms data plotted on top left chart)
When objective scientists review this empirical evidence, they likely conclude that human CO2 emissions have nothing to do with accelerating temperatures; that solar activity is a much more powerful driver of global temperatures; and, global cooling may be a more likely outcome for the near future, unless the sun starts climbing back to a normal level of activity that civilization experienced since the 1950s (review historical solar activity charts).
Soooo...we are now witnessing a morphing of the "consensus" that better comports with climate realities, which means more and more scientists will be abandoning the anti-CO2 AGW theory because it is no longer scientifically defensible.
With that said, yes, CO2 emissions do have some impact on temperatures due to the physics, but it's not much of an impact and it appears to pale when compared to the impact of solar activity.
Previous global cooling posts and more temperature/climate charts.